Oracle bolsters Marketing Cloud to show CMOs the big picture

It's a common theme that spans functional areas within the organisation: data remains stuck in silos, making it all but impossible for decision-makers to get a glimpse at the big picture. Zeroing in on marketers' experience of this problem, Oracle has rolled out several enhancements to its Marketing Cloud designed to help companies develop a more holistic view of their customers.

Among the new features unveiled at Oracle's Modern Marketing Experience event this week in Las Vegas are Oracle ID Graph, Rapid Retargeter and AppCloud Connect.

Oracle ID Graph is designed to help marketers connect the many identities a consumer may have across channels and devices and understand that they all belong to the same person.

"Customers interact with companies in dozens of highly fragmented touchpoints," said Kevin Akeroyd, general manager for the Oracle Marketing Cloud. "Most companies can't put together the 'you' they know in each of those -- you end up being 17 different customers in 17 different databases within one company."

By surfacing the person behind all those identities, the new capabilities are designed to help marketers orchestrate a consistent and personalized experience, Oracle said.

Rapid Retargeter, meanwhile, works toward a similar goal by enabling marketers to tailor customer interactions as they happen and deliver the most relevant and timely message. When a shopper abandons an online shopping cart, for instance, the marketer can immediately send an email reminder of the cart's contents.

AppCloud Connect, on the other hand, is a set of APIs and open frameworks designed to enable organisations and technology vendors to leverage apps and media within the context of Oracle Marketing Cloud.

Focusing on the data-management portion of the Oracle Marketing Cloud, meanwhile, are two new features designed to help marketers connect audience data from across disparate marketing tools for better targeting.

New Lookalike Modeling capabilities aim to make it easy for users to transfer audience data into the data-management platform, where a self-learning algorithm and automated workflow can help identify a target audience. OnDemand On-Board capabilities allow marketers to import data from their Web analytics platforms and use it as audience data within the data-management platform.

Oracle also announced new integrations between Oracle Marketing Cloud and the company's Commerce and WebCenter Sites products. The goal, once again, is to unify the platforms, people and processes underlying the customer experience for more consistent messaging and branding.

"It's no longer acceptable to treat the customer as 17 different people," Akeroyd said. "CIOs and CMOs need to be locked at the hip."

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